


unrequited

by zauberer_sirin



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Future Fic, Romance, Skye gets what she wants, Unrequited Love, Unresolved Romantic Tension, coulson feels
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-30
Updated: 2014-09-30
Packaged: 2018-02-19 10:22:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,233
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2384885
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zauberer_sirin/pseuds/zauberer_sirin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Coulson makes a move. Skye rejects him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	unrequited

He gives it seventeen hours before he asks her why.

He doesn't want her to think he's rejecting her rejection.

He's not.

He's just confused.

"It's just that," Skye starts, sitting on her bed with her pillow against her knees, surrounded by all things Skye that would normally put Coulson in a cheerful mood, just by being here. "I know how it would end. I ruin things, that's my track record on this. It never works out and –"

"But you can't know that."

He sits by her side, but leaving her as much space as possible, he just wants them to be on the same level, to look at her in the eye like this.

"But I know that," she says, and she sounds so convinced, so convincing and so sad. "And anyway even if I didn't know that, I wouldn't risk it. We would end up hating each other and hurting the team, and we wouldn't have what we have now. What we have now is everything to me. I can't lose it on a whim."

It's not a whim, he wants to say. He knows Skye is in love with him, has known for a while. He was just too scared to do anything about it – a lame line, he knows, but pretty much the truth. A lot has happened since then. He is not that scared man anymore. He's healed. He knows Skye loves him. He wouldn't have kissed her if he wasn't sure. He likes that she doesn't call their relationship a friendship, because it's not, she just calls it " _what we have_ ".

"Last year when you were made Director and you were..."

She drops her gaze.

"What?"

"Absent," she says, and he can hear the residual pain her voice, from those darker days. "In more ways than one. I got a taste of what it would be like, losing you. Coulson, I couldn't stand that again."

"Phil," he says.

"What?"

" _Phil_ , please. If we are talking about this I'd prefer if you called me Phil." He notices her grimace. "What?"

"You have no idea how many times I've dreamed of you asking me to call you Phil."

How badly he wants to reach out and touch her arm, hold her hand. He wants to pull her into a second kiss, show her that _this_ could be possible, against history and common sense he believes it could. Then he remembers she rejected him. But her face tells him something different.

"So maybe, if you want this that much, you should take the chance," he says, gently. "I've never seen you hesitate in taking chances before."

"Maybe I've never had anything I couldn't bear to lose before."

She's still not meeting his eyes, drawing shapes on the covers with her hand.

"Skye..."

"I'm so sorry."

"Don't be sorry."

"I'm being selfish, I know that. But I'd rather hurt you than lose you. I'd rather have you in any capacity than not have you at all. And I know that's what would happen."

"Sk–"

"You can be angry at me, you can yell if you want."

"I'm not angry," he says, touching her face for a moment. "I'm not going to yell at you. I just... I'll do whatever you want me to do, just don't cry."

Skye stares at his hand, his fingertips coming off her cheeks wet. She looks startled. She had no idea she was crying.

 

He will do whatever she wants.

So he does what she wants.

He accepts her "no".

 

He gives it eighteen days before he risks being alone with Skye again.

He's missed her.

This is not the first time they have pulled away from each other but it's different somehow, because of the knowledge that she wants to be with him and is consciously denying herself of the chance to have it. It hurts more than rejection would have hurt – because he wants things for Skye, he wants her to have the things she wants. He wants obscene amounts of happiness and joy and companionship and Skye... well, she thinks Coulson can be that and he can't bear to look at her knowing that, knowing she wants him.

So he gives her space, too much space, overabundance of space, and it's painful, but necessary. He thinks. He thinks he's doing the right thing. He thinks he's doing what Skye wants. He will always do that.

"I've missed you," she says when he finds her in the kitchen at night and they share a late night beer and talk about the latest mission and it feels like what happened never happened, except he still loves her face best, except Skye still looks at him like she's afraid he'll disappear if she says the wrong word, makes the wrong expression. He's not sure anyone else has ever been this afraid he'll disappear. All his life he used to think he could slip away at any moment and nobody would notice. Skye would notice.

"I've missed you," she says when all the talk of missions and plans and figuring things together is done.

Coulson just stares at her.

"I'm sorry," she says, head down for a moment. "I shouldn't have said that. It's not fair of me."

"I miss you too," he says, quietly and honestly, smiling at her.

It feels almost normal.

She almost smiles back.

 

He remembers kissing her that night, that only night, that one and only kiss between them, and he remembers Skye _kissing back_. He remembers. Holding her face with trembling but brave fingers and feeling her hair fall over his cheek. Her hot, hungry mouth like a fevered dream, like something he hadn't dared to wish for before. He remembers the kiss. He doesn't know if the memory is torture or something to be cherished. Most days he thinks it's both.

 

It's three weeks before he has to go on a mission. 

The first time since it happened.

Things to have gone back to normal, a relative state of normal, something unfulfilled about it but the team needs them and they need each other so it will have to do; things seems to have gone back to normal and Coulson expects today, this mission, is no different, until Skye touches the tip of her fingers against the fabric of his bulletproof vest for a moment.

Her eyes are bigger and darker than usual. She looks like she wants to say something.

She shakes her head. " _Director_ ," she says and Coulson nods instead of saying goodbye.

 

It's three weeks before he actually almost gets himself killed.

He didn't mean to, and he wasn't being reckless – except for the bits where he was. He was just trying to get Trip to safety when their car got hit and suddenly he felt it like a memory, the sharp metal going through his body, the torn bit of the car's frame and Coulson part of its debris.

He could have laughed at the irony, if laughing didn't hurt so much and if it didn't get in the way of _not dying_. This is why he shouldn't go out on the field. 

You should have said goodbye, is all he could think about while he was bleeding to death on the road. You should have told her – 

Except he didn't, exactly. Bleed to death.

Skye checks the bandages with ginger hands when he wakes up, unable to believe he might have survived all that.

"I was wrong..." she mutters and Coulson doesn't understand.

He smells of alcohol and blood and he can't move. It's not exactly a hole in his heart – it's not like last time – and Skye is here and it hurts to breathe but it's better than anything he's had in his life. He tilts his head on the examination table to look at her and that hurt to but he does it. Her hands on his chest are not enough. He wants to see her face, read her lips because he can't quite make out what she is saying to him right now.

"I was wrong, I was wrong. I thought you were going to die."

"I'm okay." he tells her for comfort, without much conviction.

"When we heard over the coms..." she tries to explain, voice damp and broken. "They said you were – and all I could think about was how stupid I had been. For saying no. Because I could have had that time with you and I – I _chose_ not to."

It all comes out, quick and unstoppable, like blood spurting from an open wound. Her expression is an open wound. Coulson wants to hold her, but he feels too weak. His right arm is numb.

"You were gone," she repeats. "I lost you."

He can feel her fingers digging into his shoulder. He was never gone, he thinks. Those hands would have torn him away from death itself. She's so scary. He loves her more than he realized. Even if she doesn't want him a sense of belonging envelops him whenever he is with Skye. 

"I'm here," he says.

She shakes her head, shrinking herself into him, filling his crooks and corners with her embrace. She is heavy, her love has always been.

"I was so stupid."

"You weren't." He whispers something into her hair, comforting words, he's not sure which ones. He might be telling her how much he loves her, he's so dizzy.

"Can I change my mind?" she asks.

"About what?"

"About _us_. Can I change my mind?" she asks again, not looking at him, pressing her mouth to the line of his arm. Coulson barely recognizes her voice.

He can't stand to see her cry.

He moves his fingers to the base of her skull, caressing deeply and rhythmically.

"Of course you can change your mind."

She slips her hands from his chest to his neck and kisses him.

Skye kisses him like she is still waiting for him to disappear any moment, like she is going to fuck it up. She kisses with her hands into his collar and her cheeks wet, and she kisses with teeth, like she can't let go of him for a moment. She tastes like tears and he can't stand to see her like this so he shuts his eyes tightly closed and kisses her back and it's better and so much worse than their first kiss.

"I'm here, I'm here," he mutters against her hunger and her lips, even though he knows she can't believe him just yet.

 

It's the better part of a year before Skye stops being afraid.

It hasn't been easy, but then nothing ever has, for them. They have screwed up as often as not. And Skye has always looked at him – not always but often at first and then sometimes and now it's only rarely but it's still there – like this is not something entirely real, like she can't count it as her own. Coulson thinks about her as a child, landing on her seventh or eighth foster home, looking at the items in her new room for the first time, thinking none of them was really hers because she would be leaving soon anyway.

Nothing special happens the day that stops.

They are talking shop over breakfast. In a year Skye looks so much older and grounded than she should. He feels tired, but not in the old bad sense of the word. They are both different people, in a way. They have grown, but they have grown together.

"You didn't come to bed last night," Skye tells him, one warm arm around his waist. It's not an accusation. There are things only she can understand. And only she can understand him this well.

He makes a non-committal sound, or more like a growl, feeling the early morning in his dry throat. Skye presses a smile against his shoulder, against his wrinkled shirt.

"Budget?" she guesses. He wears his heart on his sleeve for her.

"You're welcome to try," he tells her.

"Phil..." she raises an eyebrow. "You do realize SHIELD has an accountant, right?"

He turns to her, brushing his lips against her temple. She smells of the better side of early morning, shampoo and the traces of the bed they share.

"Let me be obnoxious and overzealous for a while longer," he asks. "Please."

Skye laughs and kisses him in the same breath. She tastes like toothpaste and familiarity and some days Coulson can't believe this is his life and he tries not to forget it, that feeling, not to take it for granted. He remembers the hole in his heart.

And Skye seems happy and feels happy against his caress and, this morning, for the first time, she seems unafraid.

He can feel it in the way she kisses him, this morning, that something has changed.

This kiss shouldn't be different from the million that came before, but it is. She has smiled at him like this before, but not quite. She has pulled him to her, hands flattened against his hips. This has happened before, but not like this. This has happened before and maybe that's what did the trick, in the end.

She holds him, she is holding on to him, but not like he might slip through her fingers, not like she might lose him.

She holds on to him, but just because she wants.


End file.
